Silver on the Tree (29 page)

Barney listened helplessly to the passion in the frail voice, his uneasiness growing. He felt very lonely and small.

The door crashed open, and Glyndwr was there again among his men, scowling, silent. He glanced from Barney to Iolo Goch; the old man shrugged.

“Listen to me now, boy,” said Glyndwr, his dark-bearded face grim. “There is a comet in the sky these nights, to show
my coming triumph, and on that sign I shall ride. Nothing shall stop me. Nothing—least of all the thought of tearing apart a spy from King Henry who refuses to tell his sending.” His voice rose a little, quivering with control. “I have just heard that a new English army is camped the other side of Welshpool. You have one minute remaining to tell me who sent you into Wales, and whether that army knows I am here.”

Only one thought sang through the fear loud in Barney's head now:
He may belong to the Dark, don't talk, don't tell him who you are….

He said, choking, “No.”

The man shrugged. “Very well. I have sent to speak once more with the one who brought you to me. The light-voiced one from Tywyn, with the white horse. And after that—”

He broke off, staring at the door, and as Barney turned his head the whirling seemed to be back, the speed and the turning, turning….

… and turning, turning, Will and Bran, each holding the gleaming crystal sword, found themselves suddenly still now. A heavy wooden door before them burst open, and inside in a low-roofed dark room they saw a group of armed men. One stood separate, a dark bearded man with an air of authority, and before him was Barney standing very small and tight-faced. Several of the men lunged forward in shouting confusion, and the bearded one snapped one sharp word and they fell back instantly like startled dogs, swift but reluctant, looking at their leader with an astonishment that was almost suspicion.

Will's senses as an Old One were vibrating like a harpstring. He stared at the man with the beard, and the man stared back for a moment and then gradually the grim lines of his face were relaxing, changing, becoming a smile. An unspoken greeting in the Old Speech came into Will's mind, and aloud the man said, in halting English, “You are
come to a wild time, Sign-seeker. But welcome, if my men do not take you for another English informer such as we have here.”

“Will,” Barney said huskily, “he keeps telling me I'm a spy and they want to kill me. Do you know him?”

Will said slowly, “Greetings, Owain Glyndwr.”

“The greatest Welshman of all.” Bran was gazing in awe at the bearded man. “The only one ever to unite Wales against the English, through all the quarrelling and feuding.”

Glyndwr was looking at him with narrowed eyes. “But you … you….” He glanced uncertainly at Will's blank expressionless face, and shook his head crossly. “Ah no, nonsense. No place for dreams in my head, with the last and hardest battle waiting us. And the bloody English coming up like ants in spring.” He turned to Will, waving a hand at Barney. “Is the boy with you, Old One?”

“Yes,” Will said.

“That explains much,” Glyndwr said. “But not his stupidity in failing to tell me so.”

Barney said defensively, “How was I to know you weren't part of the Dark?”

The Welshman put back his head with a curt incredulous laugh, but then straightened, looking with something like respect. “Well. True. Not badly done.
Sais bach.
Take him now, Sign-seeker.” He reached out once strong arm and propelled Barney backwards as if he had been a toy. “And go about your purposes in my land in peace, and I will give you any support you need.”

“There will be great need,” Will said grimly, “if it is not already too late.” He pointed to the sword that Bran was already holding out before him, in wonder and alarm; the blade was flickering again with blue light, as it had done at the destruction of the Lost Land, as it had done at the rushing descent of the Dark that had carried Barney away.

Glyndwr said abruptly, “The Dark. But this is my stronghold—there can be none of the Dark here.”

“There are many,” said a soft voice at the door. “And by right, since you let the first of them in.”

“Diawl!”
Glyndwr sprang upright, instinct pulling a dagger from his belt; for in the doorway, between two armed men frozen helplessly out of movement, stood the White Rider, a robed figure with eyes and teeth gleaming out of the shadows of the white hood.

“You sent for me, Owain of Gwynedd,” the Rider said.

“Sent for you?”

“The light-voiced one from Tywyn, with the white horse,”
said the White Rider mockingly. “Whom your men welcomed so warmly for the gift of a spying English boy.” The voice hardened. “And who claims in return now another boy, of more significance, and with him the sword he carries.”

“You have no claim over me,” Bran said with contempt. “The sword brings me into my power and out of your reach, in this time or any other.”

Owain Glyndwr looked at Bran, at Will, and back at Bran: at the white hair and the pale face with its tawny eyes, and the sword-blade flickering with blue flame.

“The sword is two-edged,” the White Rider said.

Bran said, “The sword belongs to the Light.”

“The sword belongs to no one. It is in the possession of the Light only. Its power is the power of the Old Magic that made it.”

“Made it at the command of the Light,” Will said.

“And yet also the tomb of every hope,” said the Rider softly, masked still by the white hood. “Do you not remember, Old One? It was written. And there was no word as to whose hopes should be entombed.”

“But they shall be your own!” Owain Glyndwr said suddenly, and he snapped some words in Welsh to his men and sprang towards the back wall of the room, reaching for something. Soldiers flung themselves at the white-robed form of the Rider. None managed to touch him; they fell sideways, backwards, colliding with some hard invisible
wall, and the Rider lunged forward at Bran. But Bran swept the sword Eirias to and fro before him as if writing in the air, and the sword left a sheet of blue flame hanging and the Rider fell back with a shriek. Even as he moved he seemed to change, to multiply as if suddenly there were a crowd with him; but Owain was calling, urgently and Will dared not wait to see, but followed the rest through a doorway they had not seen before.

Then leather-clad Welsh soldiers were pushing them on to the backs of a string of sturdy grey mountain ponies, and past slate cliffs and stone walls and through green lanes they trotted swiftly and silently where Owain led. The roar and confusion of the Dark rose behind them, and with it the clash of swords and the song of arrows from long bows, and voices shouting in English as well as Welsh. Will said nothing, but he knew that another battle as well as their own was beginning there, the reason for the Dark's choice of this time for their new hostaging, and that Owain was not in the place where he must have ached to be.

Only when they reached a mountain path where the land rose very steeply, and Owain motioned them to dismount and to follow him on foot, did Will look openly back—and saw smoke rising from the grey roofs they had left, and flame leaping.

Owain said, bitterly, “The Norman rides always on the back of the Dark, as the Saxon did, and the Dane.”

Barney said unhappily, “And I'm all those things mixed up, I suppose. Norman and Anglo-Saxon
and
Dane.”

“In what century?” Glyndwr said, pausing to stare ahead up the mountain.

“The twentieth,” Barney said.

The Welshman stopped very still for a moment. He looked at Will. Will nodded.

“Iesu mawr,”
Glyndwr said; then he smiled. “If the Circle spreads that far forward, it is not so bad to find failure here, for a time. Until the last summoning of the Circle, outside all Time.” He looked down at Barney. “No worry about
your race, boy. Time changes the nature of them all, in the end.”

Bran said from above them, urgently, “The Dark is coming!” In his hand Eirias was burning a brighter blue.

Owain looked down the mountain the way they had come, and his mouth tightened. Will turned too, and gasped; a sheet of white flame was moving steadily towards them up through the bracken, without sound or heat, remorseless in its pursuit of those it sought to destroy. A troop of Glyndwr's soldiers stood directly in its path.

“It is not so bad as it seems,” the Welsh leader said, watching Will's face. “Glyndwr has the tricks of an Old One, be assured.” The white teeth flashed in his dark face, and he clapped Will on the shoulder, pushing him. “Go,” he said, “go up that path, and you shall shortly be where you are meant to be. Leave me to take the Dark on a dance into these hills. And if my men and I shall seem to be kept in these hills forever, that will not be such a bad thing, for it will prove to my people that the Lord of the Dark was wrong, and that hope does not lie dead in a tomb but is always alive for the hearts of men.”

He glanced at Bran and raised his dagger in a formal salute.
“Pob hwyl,
my brother,” he said gravely. Then he and his men were gone, darting back down the mountain, and Will led the way up the path on which he had been set. It wound between bleak points of grey rock, narrower and narrower, until they came to a sudden turn where the rock overhung the path and each of them had to bend his head to pass beneath a low natural arch. And at the moment when all three of them were in line, on that piece of the path which lay under the rock, there was a whirling and a turning of the air about them, and a long, strange, husky shrieking in their ears, and when the giddiness went out of their minds they were in a different place and a different time.

Simon and Jane had left the dunes and crossed the golf course, coming to the wire fence edging the railway track, when they heard the strange noise. It rang out over their heads on the wind: a clear startling metallic clang, like the single blow of a hammer on an anvil.

“What was that?” Jane was very jumpy still.

“Railway signal. Look.” Simon pointed to the lonely pole standing beside the track ahead. “I never noticed it was there before.”

“Must be a train coming.”

Simon said slowly, “But the signal's gone to ‘Stop.'”

“Well, the train's already been by, then,” Jane said without interest. “Oh Simon, I wish we knew what's happening to Barney!” Then she broke off, listening, as a long, shrieking, husky whistle came on the wind, from a long way off towards Tywyn. They were standing close to the railway fence now. The whistle came again, louder. There was a humming in the rails.

“There's the train coming now.”

“But such a funny noise—”

And they saw in the distance, against the growing grey clouds, a long plume of white smoke, and heard the rising roar, closer and closer, of a fast-moving train. Then it came into sight, round the distant bend, and grew clearer, rushing at them, and it was like no train they had ever seen there before.

Simon gave a great whoop of astonished joy. “Steam!”

Almost at once there was a sudden hissing and groaning and scraping as the train came closer to the signal and the driver flung on his brakes; black smoke belched from the funnel of the enormous green locomotive harnessed to the long train—longer than any normally on that line, a dozen carriages or more, all gleaming as if new in two colours, chocolate brown below and a creamy almost-white above. The train slowed, slowed, its wheels screeching and whimpering on the track; the vast engine came slowly past Simon and Jane standing wide-eyed at the fence, and the driver and fireman, blue-overalled, dusty-faced, grinned and raised hands in greeting. With a last long whish of steam the train stopped, and stood still, hissing gently.

And in the first carriage, a door swung open and a tall figure stood in the doorway, with one hand outstretched, beckoning.

“Come on now! Over the fence, quickly!”

“Great-Uncle Merry!”

They clambered over the wire fence and Merriman hauled them one by one up into the train; from the level of the ground the door was almost as high as their heads. Merriman swung the door shut with a solid crash; they heard the clang of the signal again as its arm went down, and then the locomotive began to stir, a slow heavy chuffing rising in speed and sound, with the dunes slipping past outside, faster and faster, swaying, rocking, clicketty-clacking, the wheels beginning to sing.

Jane choked suddenly and clutched at Merriman.

“Barney—they've taken Barney, Gumerry—”

He held her close for a moment. “Quietly, gently now. Barney is where we are going.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

Merriman led them to the first compartment in the swaying train, its long plush seats quite empty. He closed the sliding glass door behind them, and they collapsed on to the padded cushions.

“That engine, Gumerry!” Simon, an expert railway-fancier, was lost in admiring wonder. “King class, from the old Great Western, ages ago—and this old-fashioned carriage—I didn't think they even existed any more outside a museum.”

“No,” Merriman said vaguely. Sitting there he looked the same rumpled figure who had wandered occasionally into their lives for as long as they could remember; his long bony frame wore a nondescript dark sweater and trousers, and his thick white hair was tousled. He was staring out of the window; the little compartment was suddenly dark, lit only by a dim yellow bulb in the ceiling, as the train dived into a succession of short tunnels and came out beyond Aberdyfi, running again along the river. A small station whisked by.

“Is it some special train?” Simon said. “Not stopping at stations?”

“Where are we going?” said Jane.

“Not too far,” Merriman said. “Not very far.”

Simon said abruptly, “Will and Bran have the sword.”